On May 26, 2013 I finished the first draft of More More Time, my fifth novel. It has taken me nearly two years to complete this story. I am very excited about it. Here is a synopsis:

In this novel of love and loss, of hope
and the constraints of time, we are introduced to Maxwell Ruth, a sixty-two
year old history teacher who is obsessed with Abraham Lincoln, disappointed in
his chosen career, frustrated with a life less great than he had hoped, and
desperate for a relationship with a woman. After a fall down his basement
stairs, Max starts hearing a simple, yet puzzling message: endingtimeendingtimeendingtime. Little does he know that these
words will have meaning for the other key people in his life, as well. Hargrove
Stinson, Max’s best friend and fellow history teacher, becomes involved with
Max’s neighbor, Beth, a massage therapist; Beth’s husband, Bob, becomes the
unwitting inspiration for Gwen Stinson to confront the inadequacies of her
marriage to Hargrove and to embrace the possibility of change for the first
time. And then there is Constance Young, a secretary in Max’s doctor’s office,
vivacious, sensuous, who will give Max the one thing he has never had---love.
Under the surface of these lives are loss, abuse, infidelity and a search for
something different. Each could use More
More Time, but the clock is always ticking and time is always short.

Maxwell Ruth, thoroughly steeped in the
legacy of the 1960s has grown cynical over the years. He loathes the apathy of
his students and yet seems unable to change the course of his life. Both of his
parents were killed in separate though equally freakish accidents. He has never
been in love and he feels time is running out. Constance Young will prove to be
the love of his life. He will die with Constance at his side, while giving his
annual recitation of the Gettysburg Address.

Constance Young, in her mid-fifties, is
the secretary at Max’s doctor’s office. She is a widow with a story to tell.
She takes a liking to the owlish Max that surprises her coworkers. They begin a
relationship that ends in love.

Hargrove and Gwen Stinson married when
Gwen became pregnant. Hargrove “did the right thing” by marrying her even
though it was unclear whether he loved her. When Gwen had their daughter,
Sally, Hargrove’s love for her kept the marriage alive. After Sally committed
suicide in college, though, Hargrove and Gwen’s relationship began a slow,
nearly invisible downward spiral from which neither seemed able to escape. Gwen
was frequently hospitalized and Hargrove found an accommodating massage
therapist, Beth Hazelwood, that helped him escape from his woes.

Beth and Bob Hazelwood, both in their
late thirties, are struggling in their marriage after Beth learns that Bob has
been unfaithful. She is also frustrated that Bob seems to have no ambition. Beth’s
early sexual abuse at the hands of her father form the background for many of
her struggles. Bob, one of Max’s former student’s, doesn’t understand what to
do with his life or his wife. A long forgotten gift from his former teacher
will prove transformative. And a serendipitous encounter with Gwen Stinson,
will transform her life.

Each of these characters is faced with
the fickle nature of time, assuming there will always be More More Time, yet faced with the pressing reality of endingtime.
This story is a humorous, tender, yet raw, look at how time shapes the lives of
six people whether they recognize it or not.

Of course there is still much work to do. I am letting the book simmer for a while before I start editing, shaping, buffing and polishing the text. I will likely enlist a freelance editor, as well, before sending it to my publisher. I hope this work is completed by fall 2013.

Below is the first chapter of More More Time. I hope you like it.

Maxwell Ruth lay
sprawled on the basement floor studying the rafters above him where a maze of
spider webs formed a canopy world usually outside of his awareness. He wondered
if its eight-legged residents watched him with puzzled curiosity as, from time
to time, he invaded their space returning tools to the nails he had long ago
pounded into the plaster walls, or, as he was today, bringing laundry to be
washed. Did they wonder at him as he now wondered at them? Did they know that
with a single sweep of his broom, he could destroy them all? Of course they didn’t, thought Maxwell.
They were protected from such thoughts; they just lived, not having to wash
clothes and prepare lesson plans and cook dinner and drive to work and stand in
front of a classroom of apathetic students each day; they spun at their
leisure, not governed by the bell at the end of period, not knowing one minute
from another, not knowing time at all, its heavy feet marching, step by step,
step by step. They lived, unaware. Who
was better for their circumstance? Maxwell wondered.

He breathed deep
the musty, cool air and stretched his arms out on the cement floor, appreciating
the chill. He felt the sweat on his arms trickling through graying hair and
puddling where his skin met the floor.His head pressed tight against the basement wall, his neck aching; his
legs lay limp on the last two steps of the staircase he had climbed ten
thousand times or more. It was several minutes before it struck him odd that he
was in such a position. It was several minutes more before he noticed the blood
flowing like a lava river across his forehead into his right ear and on to the
floor. He tried to move and then thought better of it when his body, still
assessing the damage, made a convincing argument to stay put.

Maxwell reached
into his pants pocket and pulled out a handkerchief which he used to mop his
bleeding brow. He folded it over time and again, trying to absorb as much blood
as possible. He noted a gash over his right eye, but the pain did not register.
Upon him lay underwear, T-shirts, knee-high black socks, white dress shirts and
grey trousers, evidence of his last week’s activities. And beside him lay Our Nation’s Heritage, the history text
he had planned on reading while waiting for his laundry to run its many cycles.
The wicker clothes basket stood beside him, right side up, waiting to be filled
again. He dropped his handkerchief to the floor and lay back, trying to get his
bearings.

Soon Maxwell’s
head began to throb. The blood was clotting now, forming a Gorbachev-like paste
across his forehead and temple. He drew his legs to one side and wriggled his
body around so that his head was no longer wedged against the wall. He
stretched out flat as he could and mentally checked his legs and arms and hips
and chest and abdomen and neck and finally his head, which was where the
trouble seemed to lie.

He looked back up
the stairs to the open kitchen door where the sun was shining. Only then did he
start piecing together what had happened. He had eaten his breakfast, an
English muffin with orange marmalade and a cup of tea with half-and-half and
sugar, while perusing the morning newspaper. He was reading a story about a
young man who for the third time in as many weeks had opened the hood of his
car only to find a copperhead snake curled on top of the radiator. What in the heck? thought Maxwell as he
pushed his chair from the table, stood, took a final sip of his tea, and then
picked up the clothes basket that was waiting by the basement door. So began
his Saturday ritual.He always washed
his shirts first so that they could hang dry before ironing them on Sunday
morning. If he put them in the dryer they might shrink, something that
Maxwell’s persistently expanding girth could not withstand. Then all his
underwear and et ceteras and, finally, bath towels, wash clothes, hand towels
and dish towels. Three loads usually did it.

He always stayed
in the basement while the first load was in the wash so he could quickly
transfer it to the dryer and then put in the second load. The dryer took a long
while, giving him time to attend to other things. Sometimes he dusted and swept
the living room and his bedroom. Other times he mopped the kitchen floor and
cleaned the toilet. Occasionally he sat on his front porch and did absolutely
nothing at all.

More often than
not, while he waited for the first load of wash to finish, he pulled out the
teacher’s edition of Our Nation’s
Heritage so that he could review the chapters to be covered in the following
week. He would make changes in the lesson plans if necessary, although, truth
be told, he hadn’t changed them in years. “You can’t just lecture at them all
day,” said his department chair, Timothy Blackwell, almost fifteen years his
junior. “Kids don’t learn that way anymore. You need to make your lessons more
interactive; use some of the technology in your room, like that smart board of
yours. It does amazing things.”Maxwell
would listen intently, shaking his head in agreement; he would thank Timothy,
or Timmy, as he thought of him, and promise to give it a try, though his
fingers were always crossed.

The problem with
students today was that they were so spoiled by Sesame St. and MTV and
videogames and You Tube and Twitter, whatever that was, that all they cared
about was their iPods and cell phones and texting and where they were going to
get their next joint; they had no respect for their elders and they didn’t care
about learning. Their parents were afraid of them and wanted schools do things
that would never have been expected when Maxwell entered the profession some
forty years ago, like teaching them self-esteem, and personal values, and sex,
for God’s sake, and basically raising them while their parents were either off
to Yoga classes or sitting around somewhere drinking frappachinos or meeting
with their divorce lawyers. He’d be damned if he was going to cave into a
simpering bunch of crybabies. He wasn’t there to baby-sit or entertain; he was
there to teach. American history was American history. You didn’t need to dress
it up to make it exciting. It came with its own excitement if you had enough
self-discipline to listen and learn. How hard is that?But no. Instead they sat with blank stares on
their faces, texting each other shamelessly throughout his class, several with
their heads on their desks sleeping, the girls with their breasts falling out
of their tops, and the boys with their pants falling off their rear-ends.

Standing in front
of them, Maxwell often imagined his beloved Abraham Lincoln, or as he preferred
to call him, The Great Man, at his side, his long awkward arms stretching far
beyond his shirt cuffs, his homely, textured face and somber eyes. What would
The Great Man think of these young Americans? Would he wonder why he had worked
so hard to save the Union, only to have it taken for granted by a bunch of
pimple-faced teenagers, some of whom didn’t even know who The Great Man was.
“First president, right, Mr. Ruth?”

Maxwell tried to
make peace with the new generation and tried to ignore the silliness of new
educators. He believed his job was to tell the American story as best he could.
The ears that were open would learn. He didn’t care about the rest.

Maxwell had
dropped the history textbook into the clothes basket and headed for the
basement steps. He didn’t remember much of what had happened after that. All he
knew for certain was that he had ended up at the bottom of the stairs with a
gash in his head and a body full of aches and pains.

He sat up and
stretched his neck slowly from side to side. He rubbed both of his legs and
moved his ankles in circles. He took a deep breath and looked up the stairs
again. He wasn’t sure he was ready to stand, so he lay back on the floor.

Through the quiet
of the basement came that old familiar ringing in his ears. It had been ten
years since that Friday morning when he had awakened to a sound that he was
convinced was coming from his fire alarm, or maybe his stove, or maybe a
radiator. He looked everywhere until it donned on him that it came from
nowhere; nowhere, that is, in his house. It came instead from his own ears. He
shook his head and tried to clean out his ears, assuming there was water
trapped from the shower he had taken the night before. He tried to ignore it
during breakfast and on his drive to work, waiting patiently for a warm drop of
water to make its way down the ear canal. But by lunch, he was exasperated that
nothing could silence the noise. He called the doctor’s at the end of the day
but they didn’t have any appointments. He would have to wait until Monday. At
the time he thought Monday might just as well have been the middle of next
year. How was he going to make it? But he left the water in his bathroom sink
trickle onto some aluminum foil at night, making enough distracting noise that
he could sleep, and during the day, he vacated the house, stayed busy and
surrounded himself with traffic, grocery shopping and the mind-numbing noise of
the local mall. By Sunday night, he went to bed feeling triumphant. He had made
it. Come the morning he would see the doctor and in no time this problem would
be behind him. When he crawled into his car the next day, he admitted that if
he had to endure this whining, whirring ring tone another day, he might lose
his mind.

The doctor
listened to Maxwell’s description and shook his head in sympathetic
recognition. He examined Maxwell and found no abnormalities. “You’ve got a
classic case of tinnitus,” he said with self-satisfaction. “It’s not uncommon
among people your age.” Maxwell mistakenly thought that if his doctor could
name it, he could make it go away. “Not really.” He explained that it could be
caused by any number of things, including the normal hearing loss that occurs
as one gets older. When Maxwell said he hadn’t lost any of his hearing, the
doctor just shook his head. “Anyway, there isn’t really any treatment. It could
go away on its own, but that’s unlikely.” When Maxwell asked what he should do,
the doctor shrugged and said, “Learn to live with it.” When he had entered the
doctor’s office, he thought he was at the end of his rope. When he left the
doctor’s office, he understood that his rope would have to reach until forever.

It helped to think
of The Great Man’s suffering, even at an early age; the loss of his beloved
mother and sister, his poverty, a distant and uncaring father; the death of his
one true love; his marriage to a woman who was insane, the loss of children. He
thought of The Great Man and how he had overcome it all; how he had sacrificed
his very life to save a nation. How could Maxwell complain about something as
inconsequential as ringing in his ear? And so he didn’t complain; he didn’t
tell anyone; he just kept going; and in time, and with the help of a white
noise machine for sleep and plain old determination, he overcame the annoyance.

Maxwell sat up. He
leaned over on his knees and then stood, his body wavering slightly, his head
light for a moment. He held onto the railing and closed his eyes while the
dizziness passed. He took one step and then another, making his way slowly up
the rickety old stairs. His head was thumping and the bleeding had started
again, despite wrapping the wound in a dish towel he had pulled from the drawer
beside the sink.

He hated the idea
of calling someone for help. He should be able to handle this on his own. But
when the bleeding didn’t subside and his aching head felt like it might burst,
he reluctantly called 911.

“Hello,” he said
and then cleared his throat.

“Hello,” said the
dispatcher. “Is this an emergency?”

Her question
stumped him. “I don’t know if you would call this an emergency.”

“Can you tell me
what happened, sir?”

“Well, that’s why
I called.”

“And, so what
happened?

“I’m trying to get
to that, if you’d give me a chance.”

“Okay, sir.”

“I think I fell.”

“You think you
fell, sir?”

“Yes. Down my
cellar stairs like some damn fool that can’t even---”

“Have you broken
anything, sir?”

“I don’t think so.
I just came back up the steps, and---”

“Are you injured,
sir?”

“Well, yes, my
head, it’s bleeding some.”

“Anything else,
sir?”

“I don’t really
know. I---”

“Is anyone with
you that I could speak to?”

“No, there’s no
one else here. I live a---”

“What is your
address, sir?”

Maxwell didn’t
like this game of twenty questions, no matter how necessary. It reminded him of
his mother after his father got killed; her endless questioning about every
aspect of Maxwell’s life, as if minutiae of information about every second,
every minute, every hour of his day might help her conspire against the future
and all its uncertainty.

When the ambulance
arrived, several neighbors came out to see what was going on. He waved at them
as if to say, “Move along; show’s over; nothing to see here.” Bleeding put
Maxwell at the top of the list when he reached the emergency room. They quickly
rolled his gurney into the room and pulled the curtain for privacy. Then he
waited and waited some more. A nurse came in every few minutes to check on him,
to clean his wound and to encourage him not to fall asleep. A jovial young
doctor finally appeared. Fifteen stitches later he was done. The doctor
recommended that Maxwell see his family physician if headaches or neck pain
persisted. He told Maxwell that he was a lucky man; he could have killed
himself.

Upon returning
home, Maxwell sat at his kitchen table trying to get his bearings. He didn’t
feel nearly as lucky as the doctor had suggested. Instead he felt like he had
lost half his weekend and would have to hurry to get everything done before
Monday morning took him in its clutches. Despite the doctor’s recommendation
that he not climb stairs, Maxwell made his way back down the basement steps,
gathered up the clothes and put the first load in the washer. He picked up Our Nation’s Heritage and started to
read, but his head throbbed and his eyes wouldn’t focus so he closed the book
and leaned back in his chair.

That’s when he
first heard it. Not the usual ringing; something different, something that he
couldn’t quite make out. He closed his eyes and bowed his head in
concentration, but the phone rang in the kitchen, distracting him. When it
finally stopped, the new sound had stopped as well. He shrugged his shoulders,
assuming it was nothing, or that it was his tinnitus playing tricks on him. He
leaned forward in his chair about to get up, when he heard it again, far away, dreamlike,
almost pleasant. He couldn’t quite get a fix on it. It was a sound unlike the
nails-on-a-chalk-board whining in his ears that he was used to. He listened. A
violin. That’s what it was. A single, effortless chord, and then it was gone.

Maxwell returned
to the basement. The first load of wash was done. It was quiet again. He
listened. Nothing. He put the wet clothes in the dryer and put another load in
the washer. He picked up his book and started back up the stairs. He closed the
basement door and stood in the kitchen listening, but all he could hear was the
old ringing.

As the afternoon
wore on, everything Maxwell did, every step, every chore took twice as long.
His aching body had gone on strike, it seemed, picketing his every move. By
dinner time his headache had lessoned considerably, though. He ran his fingers
across the stitches that lined his forehead and temple. What would his students
say about this? Sometimes boys called out his name in low guttural tones like
they were belching---“Ruuuuuuuth!”---when he walked down the hall.

Maxwell made a
grilled cheese sandwich, tossed salad and iced tea for dinner. He nearly fell
asleep at the kitchen table, but someone knocking at the front door startled
him awake. He couldn’t imagine who it might be. Another knock, and then
another. Maxwell waited and whoever it was went away. By then, Maxwell was so
tired that he went to bed, not even changing into his pajamas.

At 3 a.m. he awoke
and went to the bathroom. As he stood over the toilet, the violin returned, but
this time there was something different. There was a rhythm to the music that
sounded almost like words being spoken through the strings. He went back to bed
and lay staring at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and concentrated, the tone
deepening, sounding more like a cello, the rhythmic pattern becoming more
distinct, more defined, like someone mumbling slowly and without interruption.
He put his hands over his ears to block out the noise of his alarm clock
ticking. He thought he could make out words, but then they slipped away. He
tried again and this time he heard them, gentle, lilting vowels and consonants
and syllables that babbled effortlessly along like a shallow creek streaming
across smooth stones in the dead of night. He almost smiled. But then the
sounds collected into words. He tried to make them out, but they eluded him.
“Dammit,” he said, leaning on one elbow, closing his eyes for concentration
sake. Slowly the words came clear and when they did, Mr. Ruth was so startled
that he sat bolt upright and reached for the lamp on the table beside his bed,
knocking the latest Lincoln biography onto the floor.

As of this writing, May 2015, More More Time is in the final stages of pre-publication at Savant Books and Publications. We are putting the finishing touches on the galley version, as well as the front and back covers. This has been a long road! I will be happy when I can announce that the book has been released. Should be in a couple of months. I will keep you posted.